Harada Keiko

Harada Keiko

2009 – “Tribute to Keiko Harada”

Keiko Harada’s career as a composer began as a child when she developed her improvisations on the piano. She studied piano, chamber music and composition at Toho Gauken School of Music where she graduated in 1993 with a thesis in c omposition. She then studied with Brian Ferneyhough.
Keiko Harada’s compositions have been awarded numerous prizes: first prize in the Music Competition of Japan Awards, the Yasuda Prize, the E-Nakamichi Prize (1993), the Yamaguchi Governor’s Prize (1995), the Akutagawa Prize for Orchestra (2001), the Kenzo Nakajima Prize in 2004, the Otaka Prize (2009), and many others.
In 2002 he lived in New York City with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
In 2005 she was invited as a professor at the Internetional Ensemble Modern Academy in Tokyo.
Many of the composer’s works have been commissioned by festivals, seminars, ensembles and soloists in many countries,including several monographic concerts performed in Belgium and Germany, as well as in Japan.
For over ten years Keiko Harada She has also lavoarated for theater, dance and for film during the fifty-fifth Cannes Film Festival , where some of her pieces were performed. In 2002 she composed the music for the film “Women in the morror” directed by Kiju Yoshida.
From 2006 to 2008 the composer was a senator of the Japan Federation of Composers and then a consultant for music projects for Tokyo Wonder Site,organized by the Tokyo Governmental Foundation.

In 2008 she was invited as the Japanese representative of the composers’ jury to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Thailand for the Anthem Award.Since 1993 she has been a professor of composition at both Toho Gakuen College of Music and Tokyo College of Music, and two monographic CDs have been released on her works. (Cypres, Belgium and Fontec, Japan)